In a major setback to Deputy Chief Minister D.K. Shivakumar, the High Court of Karnataka on Thursday refused to quash a corruption case registered against him by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) for allegedly possessing assets worth ₹74.93 crore disproportionate to his known sources of income during the check period 2013-2018.
While declining to accept Mr. Shivakumar’s contention that the first information report (FIR) was registered by the CBI with “malafide and political malice”, the court pointed out that the investigation was carried out based on the voluminous documents and evidence collected by the three agencies — the Income Tax Department, the Enforcement Directorate (ED), and the CBI.
The court directed the CBI to complete the probe, which the investigation agency claimed was 90% complete, within a period of three months and submit the final report to the jurisdictional court.
Justice K. Natarajan passed the order while dismissing the petition filed by Mr. Shivakumar, who had questioned the legality of registration of the FIR.
Can’t act like a CA
The court also said that it could not conduct a mini-trial or act like a chartered accountant for assessing or auditing the amounts and details claimed by the investigating officer and Mr. Shivakumar, who had questioned the correctness of calculation of the value of the assets made by the CBI.
In this case, the court said, the probe was at the final stage as the investigating officer had already collected voluminous documents, examined 84 witnesses and assessed voluminous documents containing around 2,412 pages submitted by Mr. Shivakumar himself.
Pointing out that the petition was filed in July, 2022, with an inordinate delay as the CBI had filed the FIR way back in October, 2020, the court rejected the contention that the CBI had delayed in completing the probe.
Case background
The case under the Prevention of Corruption (PC) Act was registered by the CBI following the findings of separate investigations conducted by the Income Tax Department and the ED.
In 2017, the Income Tax Department conducted a raid on the premises belonging to Mr. Shivakumar, based on which the ED started its probe under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act. Following discovery of alleged disproportionate assets during its probe, the ED wrote to the State government for conduct of investigation under the PC Act.
Later the CBI sought sanction from the State government to register an FIR against him. Sanction for investigation was granted on September 25, 2019, and Mr. Shivakumar was booked by the CBI on October 3, 2020.
Mr. Shivakumar, in a separate petition, had challenged the legality of the sanction granted by the State government to the CBI to probe the allegations against him. A single judge had initially stayed the sanction, but later upheld the validity of sanction.
Mr. Shivakumar filed an appeal before a Division Bench, which, in June 2023, stayed the sanction. However, the CBI had recently moved the Supreme Court challenging the stay order, and the apex court had issued notice to Mr. Shivakumar.
Probe can’t be continued
Though the court dismissed Mr. Shivakumar’s petition and granted three months time for completion of the probe, the investigation agency cannot immediately continue the probe in view of the stay granted by the Division Bench against the sanction given by the State government to the CBI to conduct the probe.
Apart from approaching the apex court challenging the stay order, the CBI had recently filed an application before the Division Bench for vacating the stay order.
